I find it very intriguing that Microsoft chose to redesign its new Windows Phone 7 Series interface this way:
The design and layout of 7 Series’ UI (internally called Metro) is really quite original, utilizing what one of the designers (Albert Shum, formerly of Nike) calls an “authentically digital” and “chromeless” experience. What does that mean? Well we can tell you what it doesn’t mean — no shaded icons, no faux 3D or drop shadows, no busy backgrounds (no backgrounds at all), and very little visual flair besides clean typography and transition animations. The whole look is strangely reminiscent of a terminal display (maybe Microsoft is recalling its DOS roots here) — almost Tron-like in its primary color simplicity. To us, it’s rather exciting. This OS looks nothing like anything else on the market, and we think that’s to its advantage. Admittedly, we could stand for a little more information available within single views, and we have yet to see how the phone will handle things like notifications, but the design of the interface is definitely in a class of its own.
Curveball thrown. While the look has been in Zunes for sometime now, the real challenge lies in whether this will take off for mobile phones. I have to commend their bravery for taking this step, going the complete opposite of Apple’s love for rounded corners, gradients, and shadows. It also looks open and airy compared to all the boxes (no matter how rounded) on the iPhone.
It definitely changes the game a bit, and like several others I’m starting to feel like the Apple interface looks dated next to this one. Pretty big deal if you ask me.
This move could backfire. People tend to shy away from minimalism, not to mention it could actually be underdesigned, lacking in visual cues and icons. It falls short of the unified look Apple has built over the years, and I doubt it could start a UI revolution the way OS X did. Would Microsoft even use this for its desktop OS?
We’ll also have to find how it really measures up in real-world testing because the interface alone won’t determine success, but also performance and features (IE and Bing instead of Safari/Mozilla and Google? What apps will it have?). Still, bold is better than half-baked, and in the mobile space this look definitely sets them apart.
The Apple stories just don’t stop coming, do they? Here’s yet another provocative issue concerning the company, but this time with web development: the iPhone is the new Internet Explorer 6, according to Peter Paul Koch.
The iPhone has become an obsession. If we don’t pay attention, we’ll have a mobile web that only works on the iPhone. And then we’ll have the real mobile web that wasn’t made by us and doesn’t give a shit about web standards and best practices.
Worse, it seems web developers are happy with this state of affairs. It seems web developers are congratulating themselves on excluding 85% of the smartphone users. They certainly never bother to check their sites in S60 WebKit, the largest smartphone browser in the world.
Fucking dimwits.
We’re doing exactly the same as ten years ago. We now say “iPhone” instead of “IE6,” but otherwise nothing’s changed.
No, wait, there’s one more change: the iPhone has far less mobile market share now than IE6 had desktop share back then.
The once most advanced browser is now the most hated, and the same fate could happen with the iPhone and its mobile web browser. However, given that they were made by two very different companies—the oft-hated Microsoft and the much-adored Apple—it’s hard to imagine the revolutionary smartphone gaining a stigma someday. An interesting achievement if that does somehow happen, but what an unfortunate future that would be.
Still, I have two points to make. First: I’m glad that a reputable voice is finally calling out this obsession with creating custom-tailored websites for the iPhone, when it’s supposed to have the most advanced browser, displaying pages as they normally would on a regular computer. Chances are you don’t have to. That’s what the multitouch zoom gesture is for, so that the screen size wouldn’t be such a hindrance.
Second: hype, here we go again. PPK draws back the curtain and tells us that there are other devices far more popular than the iPhone, yet the buzz about mobile web development is strongest with iPhone apps and iPhone app-like websites. It goes against the very idea of web standards, of making websites work in as many platforms as possible, not just what gains the most attention and is considered cool. (As an aside: what can be said about implementing CSS3 properties via browser-specific extensions? Is it the same thing?)
Finally, a minor third point: Koch isn’t addressing every mobile web developer in his article, just the ones that are so caught up in this iPhone-loving bubble that it’d be a shame when they mislead impressionable developers branching out to the mobile arena.
And a far worse shame if because of the hype we somehow get stuck in the rut that is IE6 all over again.
First the iPad, and now a debate on the relevance of Flash. Apple continues to ignore it and touts HTML5 as the future. Google is also pushing HTML5 on YouTube, with other video sites starting to follow suit. Even Mozilla is disabling it in its new mobile browser, Maemo. Clearly, the death knell for Adobe’s most controversial product is getting louder than ever.
But it’s still all talk, all noise. How about some real action? Thankfully, over at Binary Bonsai, Michael Heilemann has taken it upon himself to drop Flash for the whole month of February as a response to this tweeted challenge:
All those who think no flash on ipad is A-OK please uninstall flash from your current browser, use that for a month then get back to me.
Installing a Flash blocker isn’t really a groundbreaking exercise and is tamer than uninstalling Flash completely, but now is the best time to figure out how dependent we are on it.
So can you survive sans Flash? I won’t go out of my way to defend it nor suffer from withdrawal without it, but the status of HTML5 video alone seems troubling enough.
More importantly, most discussions cover only the question of replacing Flash video, not other applications like games. That would be an even tougher nut to crack, even with the dawn of purely Javascript-based games.
The Apple iPad has polarized the tech industry in the past week. I’m amused by this development, not in the context of product innovation or what it could mean for web design and development, but for the culture of tech opinions.
There’s the half that believes the iPad is not the revolutionary new step in computing people having been waiting for, and then there’s the other half that thinks those critics are not the iPad’s target market. Considering how Steve Jobs began with his keynote about the iPhone is now dominating the mobile phone industry over veterans Nokia and Samsung, it certainly takes a lot to accept that the iPad might not enjoy the same fate. This short and sweet (which is rare) post by Jeff Lamarche puts things in perspective:
I’m sure somebody has told you all this before, but let me point it out again: it’s not always about you. Products can be successful even if they aren’t right for you.
[...] I’m a techie, but I don’t need to be able to program on every electronic device I own. I don’t hate my dishwasher because I can’t get to the command line. I don’t hate my DVD player because it runs a proprietary operating system. Sheesh.
But my beef with this is: hardly ever does that argument surface when not so popular, not so geek-worthy products surface. From what I’ve seen in tech culture, it’s so much easier to reject, even hate a product than even entertain the notion that it could succeed. In general, in a certain demographic, in a certain geographic region.
At times the word easier gets replaced by cooler. It’s cooler to hate stuff; that’s what techies are supposed do.
See how all the Apple or tech pundits are squeezing out the possibilities where the iPad could work wonders. Will it kill e-book readers? Will it revitalize the newspaper industry? Will it shake up processes in education, art, medicine, and business? Which function was it born to do?—as though it hasn’t been discovered only because Steve Jobs didn’t whisper the answer in their ears.
Is it because of passion for the brand? I would think other products may not deserve the same passion, but they do deserve a fair chance. Don’t hate a product just because it isn’t right for you.
Perhaps now there’s half of a crowd deciding people shouldn’t be so quick to judge, the tradition could change. Or it could not, because Apple is the exception to the rule.
It’s not just about net neutrality or privacy anymore. Our future internet could be the very opposite of what it is today—free—specifically due to companies dominating their markets and the constant push to simplify the user experience.
Tim O’Reilly predicts a war is coming, one where we are at the mercy of the internet giants like Google, Facebook, and Apple: they stop making the services we are so highly dependent on interoperable.
It could be that everyone will figure out how to play nicely with each other, and we’ll see a continuation of the interoperable web model we’ve enjoyed for the past two decades. But I’m betting that things are going to get ugly. We’re heading into a war for control of the web. And in the end, it’s more than that, it’s a war against the web as an interoperable platform. Instead, we’re facing the prospect of Facebook as the platform, Apple as the platform, Google as the platform, Amazon as the platform, where big companies slug it out until one is king of the hill.
Chris Messina fears something similar as well: the death of the URL, as new formats for delivering web content are abstracting the website-going experience and letting ourselves relinquish control.
By removing our ability to navigate, choose, and share freely — these app stores are exchanging our freedom for a promise that they’ll keep us safe, give us everything we need, and do all the choosing of what’s “good enough” for us — all starting at ninety-nine cents a hit.
I know that if we always look at things with a worst case scenario in mind, we’ll never get any work done from here on out. But better to worry now than when it becomes impossible to undo things. I like how the Web is now, no matter how chaotic and crap-filled it can be.
That said, if the URL disappears, I know few people would be troubled by it, and an overhaul of the system may be needed anyway.
And as for the giants bullying us into a corner, it makes me wish the Long Tail would stand a chance.
Twitter definitely upped its game as its new homepage rolled out today (viewable only if you’re logged out). Now its greatest strengths are featured front and center: real-time search and trends. A wise upgrade no doubt, but there’s something off about the design.
On any other website I wouldn’t have been bothered by this. A fair amount of blue, green, gradients, rounded corners, and overall sleekness reminiscent of a certain OS: these are all “acceptable” characteristics of good web design these days. The problem is, this is not what Twitter is about.
To me, Twitter is warm, organic, friendly—all because of the homepage (and the Fail Whale, of course). Sure, it used stock illustrations instead of commissioning original ones, but they were distinct enough. None of the cliche sunbursts and clouds, or the decidedly safer shades of blue.
And just as Twitter exploded in popularity, so did its branding. There’s an official Twitter bird, but whenever I see any other illustrated bird—hawk, owl, or any other kind—I think of Twitter. Heck, when I see that almost distinct light shade of blue (forget Tiffany & Co.!) or a rounded typeface, I think of Twitter. And while LOLcats have cemented their meme-dom for a while now, it’s really Twitter that shot them to stardom when they were used as error messages on the site.
Sure, all these inside jokes, cutesy mascots, and pastel hues may seem immature to some, and maybe the higher-ups thought it was time to get Twitter a personality makeover. What did they replace it with, exactly? tweaked Web 2.0 slash Apple design elements? Try again.
The old design elements fit Twitter’s image of sheer simplicity, of 140-character answers to the question “what are you doing?”. And today, with the homepage redesign, that image has started to slip away.
Some chunks of good browser-related news at the turn of the new year: Firefox browser usage is more than 20% now, while Internet Explorer, especially IE6, is declining—forcibly and otherwise!
Firefox market shares are rise, IE shares decline
Browser market share from October to December 2008
For the first time ever, Net Applications is reporting that Mozilla Firefox market shares passed 20% while Microsoft Internet Explorer dropped below 70%. Four major factors are said to explain Firefox growth, from the US elections to longer weekends/holidays, and higher unemployment—all US-centric factors.
Browser version market share December 2008
Here’s a chart by browser version. IE7 remains the dominant browser in the market, while IE6 is still at number 2, having almost the same percentage as all Firefox versions combined. But it has declined from the 21-22% range in the last quarter of 2008.
Google Chrome barely leaves a dent at 1%, but surpasses Opera at 0.7%.
Google urges IE6 users to upgrade
Get faster Gmail notice in IE6 (image courtesy of Ars Technica)
According to TG Daily, Google’s Gmail is now sporting a message specifically for IE6 users to upgrade and “get faster Gmail”.
The link leads to a page that promotes Chrome and Firefox 3. “Browsers are getting faster and better at running web applications like Google Mail that use browser technology to its limits,” the page reads. “In order to get the best experience possible and make Google Mail run an average of twice as fast, we suggest that you upgrade your browser to one of the fastest Google Mail supported browsers that work on Windows.” The page offers direct download links for Firefox 3 and Chrome. IE7 and Apple’s Safari are listed as supported Gmail browsers.
Several modern browsers are listed in the linked page, and unfortunately Opera is no longer qualified on that list. At least Google is trying to be fair by mentioning competitors to its own browser, Chrome. More importantly, at least it realizes that the browser share for such an old and run-down browser are alarmingly high. Looks like it’s getting costly to maintain backwards compatibility for JavaScript-intensive web applications like Gmail.
This is not the first time that a large company is forcing its hand. Apple’s MobileMe recommends only 2 browsers: Safari, which it owns, and Firefox.
There is hope!
With the combination of natural factors and some nudging from the big, influential companies like Google and Apple, the obsolete browser that is IE6 might just retire sooner than we expect, sooner than never.
Between Apple computers gaining popularity and Google remaining just as powerful, their influence on which becomes the default browser in controlled environments will be needed to level the playing field, ultimately pushing the capabilities of web browsers forward.
When Obama Wins scours and displays tweets containing the phrase 'when Obama wins'
I’m fascinated by the single-purpose websites that have been cropping up for the past year. I’m not much of an internet historian to track down exactly when the first of their kind came out, but they officially entered meme status when Jason Kottke wrote about it back in February.
In the era of 140-character microblogging and 10-inch subnotebook computing, brevity is king. But these straight-to-the-point sites aren’t exactly the iPhone-friendly versions of our increasingly bloated, self-centered homepages and bookmarks. (That’s a different phenomenon altogether and worth discussing in a separate article.)
They’re in a different group themselves, in a peanut gallery of sorts, poking fun at the rest of the all-too serious internet population. Stop worrying whether websites need to look exactly the same in every browser, you should use tables for layout (give up?), Diet Coke will kills us, graphic design is art, Barack Obama is Muslim or muslin or President, or it’s Tuesday, April Fool’s, Christmas, or a leap year yet.
The color of the Empire State Building on November 11. On November 11 it was Purple, Purple, White. As of writing it's White, White, White.
Of course some of these one-trick ponies are web apps and mashups that do exactly one thing really well, whether it’s helping you look forward to the day when Obama wins, decide if you should bring an umbrella today, bitch and moan about our dear Adobe, or figure out whether Twitter, Gmail, the Apple Store, or some other site is down or it’s just you.
Not to mention spell definitely and other words correctly, insert angled quotes », «, ›, ‹, discover your IP address, and play a instant rimshot.
Visit A List Of Sites for more of the madness! Or go through them randomly ala StumbleUpon.
In a recent developer conference in Sydney, someone asked Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer why they’re spending so many resources on their beloved browser, Internet Explorer:
Why is IE still relevant and why is it worth spending money on rendering engines when there are open source ones available that can respond to changes in Web standards faster?
According to Techworld, this was his reply:
Ballmer began his answer philosophically, saying Microsoft will need to look at what the browser is like in the future and, if there is no innovation around them, which he thinks is “likely”, Microsoft may still need its own browser because of proprietary extensions that broaden its functionality.
“Open source is interesting,” he said. “Apple has embraced Webkit and we may look at that, but we will continue to build extensions for IE 8.”
So now if we can imagine Microsoft actually swallowing its pride to rework IE to use the same code Apple is using with Safari, and Google with Chrome, we’d have 3 competing browsers by 3 technological giants using the same foundations for building a browser. It would seem like good news for those who’ve spent sleepless nights keeping websites from breaking due to IE’s numerous bugs, although I’m not quite sure why have to have 3 different derivatives of WebKit in the first place—which is an issue for another day.
I want to go back to the question of relevance. Ballmer didn’t exactly defend IE’s relevance, even saying that there is likely to be “no innovation around them”. Are you sure? Mozilla definitely thinks otherwise. So does Google.
Add to that Microsoft’s foray into the “cloud” with Windows Azure. Google, which wanted to make sure its web apps provided the best experience, created its own web browser. IE has been around for years now, but what could be crucial to next-generation platform computing seems to be an afterthought, or is just playing catch-up.
If we were to actually take Ballmer’s words to heart, we can expect that either way, web browsing should improve for the better: either through a Webkit-based IE, or the death of IE.
It may very well be the latter, if we’re to believe this comment on the article at the AppleInsider forums:
The IE team was dismantled except for a core team called IE SE – which translates to “IE Sustained Engineering”. What this means… is a product is dead and the SE team simply puts out hot-fixes for any pertinent issues. This all happened during that great legal battle that Microsoft had with the States.
I know we can accomplish a lot more by not waiting around for IE (and Microsoft) to get its act together, but here’s yet another reason web designers and developers are in a rut.
If the company behind Internet Explorer does not believe in it, why should we?
In an interesting development regarding web standards and the browser wars, Ars Technica reports that Mozilla is taking Internet Explorer’s problematic webpage rendering into its own hands starting with a plugin for HTML5’s canvas element.
IE’s shortcomings won’t hold back the Internet for much longer, however, because Mozilla plans to drag IE into the next generation of open web technologies without Microsoft’s help. One of the first steps towards achieving this goal is a new experimental plugin that adapts Mozilla’s implementation of the HTML5 Canvas element so that it can be used in Internet Explorer.
Vladimir Vukićević says it’s “a very direct way of getting 2D (and soon 3D) graphics into web pages, and removes many of the barriers between developers and graphics rendering.” Here’s a screenshot of how it works:
HTML5 Canvas on IE, by Vladimir Vukićević
Mozilla doesn’t stop there, though. It plans bring its “next-generation JavaScript engine directly into Microsoft’s web browser” through a project called ScreamingMonkey. The plugin strategy will also be employed here.
Mixed reactions
Reactions from the crowd range from amusement to confusion to outrage. On the one hand, this move from the makers of the record-making Firefox browser is commendable. It shows that in the midst of IE’s dominating market share and FF’s sheer drive to beat it, Mozilla still wants the Web to work, one way or the other. Even if it means having to “drag IE” itself. Indeed:
Is it a sad or happy day for Microsoft, when their competitors get bored with beating them, and instead try to improve the Microsoft products to make them competitive – for free?
And what does Microsoft have to say about this? Isn’t this an insult wrapped inside a well-meaning gesture since it is coming from a competitor? Anything that gets Microsoft’s attention to hurry things up in the web standards compliance department is okay by me.
Try Adobe
But it’s not just about the browser vendors but the users themselves. How many of them will take the time to install this not-so-popular plugin? Do they care enough to see the advantages? Ars Technica thus wonders if Adobe could have been the better messenger, since Flash is ultimately indispensable these days:
This is purely speculation, but If Adobe decided to ship Screaming Monkey and the Canvas functionality as part of the next major iteration of the Flash plugin, it would rapidly accelerate adoption and get it onto lots of computers.
Cross-browser nirvana? Not quite
News of this plugin suggests that it’s taking a so much effort to make IE play nice that even competing browsers have to step in. And we’re only talking about the HTML5 canvas element here, a far less common feature, or should we say issue, than things like the double-margin bug or pixel font sizes.
